Why do you say that? I'd imagine they'd throw a party and slash paychecks in half if they could.

It's far easier to fire people and them employ somebody willing to work for half the price. The end result is pretty much identical, but the distinction is in the fact that firms will always prefer to fire people (provided they have good hiring prospects) than slashing their wages, because the price of labour is incredibly sticky. It also depends on the nature of the business two. If the success of the business relies on good infrastructure and human capital, I can't see the desire to slash wages being their in the first place, provided the employees are earning above minimum wage.

No, I'm just assuming that you're not going to pay people who are higher up the same as someone who is lower than them.

There's a threshold where, if the minimum wage is raised, other wages will have to be raised in proportion so they are about as much above minimum wage as they were before. It depends on the size of the company though; for large companies, you'd have a lot of employees who were above the threshold and wouldn't be affected by a minimum wage rise, so not everybody's pay packet would need to increase.

Poor people live paycheck to paycheck, so you can safely assume that their money goes directly back into the economy. If they have less money, then the businesses take a hit because they're not selling as much.

Well, there you're assuming the abolition of the minimum wage would lead to a drop in wages, which isn't as likely as people suffering lay-offs.

But yes, if you reduce wages enough across the board then it should lead to a shortfall in aggregate demand.

i liek this grrl but im not sure she lieks me bacck

wat do

Just be yourself. You'll terrify the whole town.

Quote from: Naja on October 27, 2014, 03:21:17 AM

Quote from: Prototype on October 27, 2014, 02:49:42 AM

Quote from: Lemy the Lizerd on October 27, 2014, 01:26:49 AM

wow man im so sorry for your loss

What would you call someone if they didn't believe in God and were 100% positive that he wasn't real?

A fucking retard.

What separates you from everyone else?

This isn't a matter of opposite opinions, it's a matter of being wrong or asking stupid questions. The answers to all of these questions are simple to the point of being intellectually deadening, or easily solved with a Google search. There are other, more intellectually invasive and diffuse questions in which I disagreed with the premise, yet respected their merits enough not to list them.

I'd go through how each of them is idiotic, but unless you actually want my opinions I won't waste the time.

I feel myself on the side of the protesters.

The anarchist lurks inside me somewhere, still.

lol

The wage gap is due to the choices women make, not discrimination.

Yes. If I wouldn't be caught.

This really did make me laugh.

The delusions would be your own. We helped create the fundamentalists and target us. That's exactly why we should only fight defensive wars and that's exactly why they are the only ones that are justified.

I suppose the U.S. created the Muslims Barbary pirates who kidnapped American sailors in the early 1800s.

You can draw a straight line from the behaviour of these people to their doctrine. Their fascistic, dogmatic and delusional beliefs are to blame for their genocidal beliefs - not because we weren't nice enough to them.

Old article from NPR.

In 2000, health care experts for the World Health Organization tried to do a statistical ranking of the world's health care systems. They studied 191 countries and ranked them on things like the number of years people lived in good health and whether everyone had access to good health care. France came in first. The United States ranked 37th.

Some researchers, however, said that study was flawed, arguing that there might be things other than a country's health care system that determined factors like longevity. So this year, two researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine measured something called the "amenable mortality." Basically, it's a measure of deaths that could have been prevented with good health care. The researchers looked at health care in 19 industrialized nations. Again, France came in first. The United States was last.

French Lessons

Now some American experts say there's a lot Americans can learn from the French.

For starters, the French system is not what most Americans imagine, says historian Paul Dutton at Northern Arizona University, author of Differential Diagnoses: A Comparative History of Health Care Problems and Solutions in the United States and France.

"Americans assume that if it's in Europe, which France is, that it's socialized medicine," he says. "The French don't consider their system socialized. In fact, they detest socialized medicine. For the French, that's the British, that's the Canadians. It's not the French system."

France, like the United States, relies on both private insurance and government insurance. Also, just like in America, people generally get their insurance through their employer.

In France, everyone has health care. However, unlike in Britain and Canada, there are no waiting lists to get elective surgery or see a specialist, Dutton says.

He says the French want pretty much the same thing as Americans: choice and more choice.

Universal Coverage, Not At Expense Of Choice

Dutton says these shared values come out of a shared history. Both countries are products of Enlightenment-era revolutions.

"The French hold individual liberty and social equality very dear ... 'liberty, equality, and fraternity' — of course the slogan of their revolution," he says. "And in this country, of course, we have similar ideals: individual liberty, social equality — equal chances for everyone."

But the French have done a better job of protecting those values in health care, Dutton says.

Americans often assume that when people get universal coverage, they give up their choice in doctors, hospitals and care. That's not the case in France, Dutton says. The system is set up both to ensure that patients have lots of choice in picking doctors and specialists and to ensure that doctors are not constrained in making medical decisions.

In France, the national insurance program is funded mostly by payroll and income taxes. Those payments go to several quasi-public insurance funds that then negotiate with medical unions to set doctors' fees. (Doctors can choose to work outside this system, and a growing minority now charge what patients are willing to pay out of pocket.) The government regulates most hospital fees. This system works collectively to keep costs down.

When someone goes to see a doctor, the national insurance program pays 70 percent of the bill. Most of the other 30 percent gets picked up by supplemental private insurance, which almost everyone has. It's affordable, and much of it gets paid for by a person's employer.

"There are no uninsured in France," says Victor Rodwin, a professor of health policy at New York University, who is affiliated with the International Longevity Center. "That's completely unheard of. There is no case of anybody going broke over their health costs. In fact, the system is so designed that for the 3 or 4 or 5 percent of the patients who are the very sickest, those patients are exempt from their co-payments to begin with. There are no deductibles."

Treating The Sickest

In France, the sicker you are, the more coverage you get. For people with one of 30 long-term and expensive illnesses — such as diabetes, mental illness and cancer — the government picks up 100 percent of their health care costs, including surgeries, therapies and drugs.

France has made an unusual guarantee that every cancer patient can get any drug, including the most expensive and even experimental ones that are still being tested, says Dr. Fabian Calvo, deputy director of France's National Cancer Institute. This kind of access is why the French — unlike Americans — say they are highly satisfied with their health care system, he says.

"It's a feeling of safety — that if you have a big problem, you could have access to the good therapy," Calvo says.

When compared with people in other countries, the French live longer and healthier lives. Rodwin says that's because good care starts at birth. There are months of paid job leave for mothers who work. New mothers get a child allowance. There are neighborhood health clinics for new mothers and their babies, home visits from nurses and subsidized day care.

The Cost Of Care

It's expensive to provide this kind of health care and social support. France's health care system is one of the most expensive in the world.

But it is not as expensive as the U.S. system, which is the world's most costly. The United States spends about twice as much as France on health care. In 2005, U.S. spending came to $6,400 per person. In France, it was $3,300.

To fund universal health care in France, workers are required to pay about 21 percent of their income into the national health care system. Employers pick up a little more than half of that. (French employers say these high taxes constrain their ability to hire more people.)

Americans don't pay as much in taxes. Nonetheless, they end up paying more for health care when one adds in the costs of buying insurance and the higher out-of-pocket expenses for medicine, doctors and hospitals.

France, like all countries, faces rising costs for health care. In a country that's so generous, it's even harder to get those expenses under control.

Last year, the national health system ran nearly $9 billion in debt. Although it is a smaller deficit than in previous years, it forced the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy to start charging patients more for some drugs, ambulance costs and other services. Debates over cost-cutting have become an expected part of the national dialogue on health care.

I mean, look at some of the things she has said over the years. Some of it is just irrationally stupid. I have trouble believing it's all 100% serious.

I still don't care. Looking at her Tumblr and Twitter, if that were the case, it's just an incredibly sad project of hers that evokes even more pity than if she were serious.